When I heard late last week that the Super Bowl would be played on Sunday, I immediately prepared a shopping list. Few ordinary but necessary chores are more stress-free than stocking up on groceries during the NFL championship game. There’s never congestion in any of the aisles, and long checkout lines (or any checkout lines, for that matter) don’t exist.. Most of the beer, chips, and salsa have been purchased by that time, but those items are rarely on my list.
I currently live where there’s a washing machine in the basement. However, when I resided in more modest surroundings, doing laundry meant going to the laundromat, which was a nightmare. Except, that is, after 5 PM on Super Bowl Sunday, when I could count on having the place to myself.
By late afternoon on Super Bowl Sunday just about all the streets are deserted. They’re so empty, in fact, that I was tempted to start walking the four miles from Biddeford to Saco in the center lane of the Maine Turnpike at 6:15 PM. I know I could have made it, but I was talked out of it by friends concerned that I’d get hit on the return trip by someone who left their football-themed gluttony fest at halftime.
The first time I intentionally missed a Super Bowl was when I was living in North Carolina and had a chance to go on a date with an attractive young woman who clearly had no interest in football. I jumped at the opportunity, even though she proposed getting together at 6 PM on the night of the big game.
Things obviously didn’t go so well, because was no second date. But they went a lot worse for the San Diego Chargers, who were slaughtered that night by the San Francisco 49ers. And after some sober reflection, I concluded the results would have been the same even if I had been parked in front of a TV stuffing my face and watching other people at the Super Bowl party I was attending swill beer and obsess over the commercials.
I began losing interest in pro football around the time the TV ads became more of a story than the game itself. I have a pretty low pop culture IQ, which may be why watching much-ballyhooed spots featuring famous people I don’t recognize leaves me cold. I was tempted to tune in to this year’s game when I heard who’d be providing the entertainment, since I’d actually heard of both of the headliners. But it turned out I had misunderstood. Green Day is a band, not Doris’s son, and Bugs Bunny wasn’t going to do the halftime show.
Almost everyone in these parts is in love with the New England Patriots, a group of abnormally large, prematurely wealthy young mercenaries that nominally represents our region. And make no mistake, these youthful gladiators are worth every dollar they’re paid, particularly given their courage in knowingly playing Russian Roulette with their immediate and long-term physical and mental health.
On a related note, sensible Patriots rooters shouldn’t mention how difficult the last seven Super Bowl-less years have been to fans of the Cincinnati Bengals, Minnesota Vikings, or Buffalo Bills, teams that have never won the Lombardi Trophy, or the New York Jets, whose last (and only) Super Bowl appearance came in the waning days of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.
And if they value their lives they’d never complain about New England’s recent “dry spell” to fans of the Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns, two teams that, through LX Super Bowls, have never even been to I.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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